Journal articles and other publications
A reproducible picture of open access health facility data in Africa and R tools to support improvement | Andy South Ahmadou Dicko Mark Herringer Peter M. Macharia Joseph Maina Emelda A. Okiro Robert W. Snow Anelda van der Walt
Wellcome Open Res 2021, 5-157 https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-157/v2Open data on the locations and services provided by health facilities have, in some countries, allowed the development of software tools contributing to COVID-19 response. The UN and WHO encourage countries to make health facility location data open, to encourage use and improvement. We provide a summary of open access health facility location data in Africa using re-useable R code. We aim to support data analysts developing software tools to address COVID-19 response in individual countries. In Africa there are currently three main sources of such open data; 1) direct from national ministries of health, 2) a database for sub-Saharan Africa collated and published by a team from KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme and now hosted by WHO, and 3) The Global Healthsites Mapping Project in collaboration with OpenStreetMap.
Malaria Data by District - An open-source web application for increasing access to malaria information | Sean Tomlinson Andy South Joshua Longbottom
Wellcome Open Res 2019, 4-151 https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.15495.2Preventable diseases still cause huge mortality in low- and middle-income countries. Research in spatial epidemiology and earth observation is helping academics to understand and prioritise how mortality could be reduced and generates spatial data that are used at a global and national level, to inform disease control policy. These data could also inform operational decision making at a more local level, for example to help officials target efforts at a local/regional level.